


Until then I'll cry instead

by cant



Category: None - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-23 17:13:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11406888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cant/pseuds/cant





	Until then I'll cry instead

18 was used to getting worse. He didn't know up from down some days, but recently he was understanding the difference and maybe, he dared to hope, getting better. Tera empathised with him and understood him, so maybe, through some miracle of nature, he understood her too.

He liked to think that. He liked to think it because it gave him a little hope that he wasn't so bad - or, rather, that he wasn't as bad as his mother said he was. Or his teachers. Or other kids he knew. Or his brother. 

He didn't quite understand what made him so different - it was like a veil, something opaque sealing him in to his own world. He could see shapes of other people but everything was muted, indecipherable, a confusing and painful mess of colour and sound and emotion he couldn't begin to unravel. 

Only Tera had ever come close enough for him to see her face. He could see her, study her, maybe even confuse the attention for love. 

That was another thing he wondered. What was he missing that everyone else had? He wasn't intelligent, but he wasn't stupid; he knew things; he even could pick out emotions in people's faces and sometimes he could respond in kind. He understood the basics. There was just something missing. Something everyone else had, that he couldn't fathom. 

"What are you thinking about, Puppy?" Tera asked, keeping her voice quiet. She hadn't called him that in a while. "You look sad." 

Oh. That was why she'd called him Puppy. He shook his head and went back to absently solving algebraic equations, only half of his attention on the puzzles. 

He put his pen down. "I'm... T-I don't get it," he said quietly, almost whispering, looking at his pen. He tended to grip it too hard and push holes into the paper. "I just wanna... Just..." 

Shit, his voice caught. He could never just be cool in front of Tera, could he? She took the pen from his fingers and slid the notebook away, probably just pleased he'd done any homework at all. "It's okay. You wanna talk about it?" 

She looked so soft and small next to him, with her soap smelling hands and crisp, ironed skirt pressed up comfortably against his bruised hands and ragged, worn jumper. One clean, dainty hand fiddled with a hole in his sleeve while she waited for him to find the words to speak. She'd learnt to be patient with him. 

Meanwhile, 18's mind was going through a million different words and a million different ways of phrasing things a second, going through all of them to find the least anxiety-fuelling one. He didn't find it, and all that came out was a weak whine and slow, creeping hand twitches. It was harder to breathe, harder to swallow, and even though he tried to squeeze and un-squeeze his hands to calm himself, panic rose in his chest. It reached his head, and he had to tear himself away from Tera to sit up and try not to put another hole in the wall next to the two already over his bed. He had nightmares about what came out of those. 

"Uh, Puppy? You don't have to say." 

He wanted to, he just couldn't find the words. Nothing came out. He was blocked up, dirty and staring at the end of his bed, feeling like he might vomit if he moved. His whole body was buzzing, breath coming out short, one arm tightly wrapped around his knees and the other clenching in his hair, squeezing and pulling until the trembles of anger left his body and nothing was left. 

He'd managed to pull out a few greasy strands of hair, he realised when his hands refused to work any more. 

"Marcus?" 

He didn't want to look at her just yet. He'd failed his own test. He shook his head. 

"You wanna write it down?" 

She slid the maths notebook and pen back over to him and, gingerly, he picked it up, taking a shaky breath before awkwardly pressing the pen to the paper. The scratching noise made him shudder, but he kept going. 

'sorry for scaring you'

That wasn't what he'd wanted to write, but it was good enough for now. Tera whined a little when she read it and shifted around behind him. 

"Puppy, can I touch you? Please?" 

He hesitated, but nodded. 

It felt like a jolt through him when she did touch him, but it felt good. Finally, with Tera's cleansing touch, he might cry. His chest flooded and overflowed from his eyes and onto his arms, the ratty jumper he hated but wore out of owning little else. Tera, with her neat shirt, shifted forwards and her arm gradually, moving slowly, inched over his back until she was holding him and he was all dried up again. 

"I g- I got t- your shirt w-wet," he noticed with a watery giggle-sob, to which she made a 'pfff' noise of dismissal. 

"I cry more than you, mister," she smiled. "This is nothing new." 

Tera held him like that for a while. "My head h-hurts." 

"It's a crying headache. And you tore some of your hair out, silly pup. You shouldn't do that." 

"I know," he mumbled, sinking into her soft, warm hug until she was leaning against the wall, holding his head to her and smoothing dirty blond hair away from his face. "Just wanna be n-normal."

There it was, what he'd wanted to say at the beginning. It just fell out now, the blockages all clear. He sighed shakily. Clear, clean. Better for a cry. 

"That's not fair," Tera said softly, her thumb brushing over his cheek, lighter than anything. "If you were normal, I wouldn't have met you."


End file.
